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It happens every day. You hit the power button on your laptop and you wait. First it seems like nothing is happening. The screen is black, but your power light is on and you hear low whirring noises. Then you see the logo of the laptop manufacturer and some text. You continue to wait as the screen goes black again, and then you hear more mysterious whirring noises. Finally, you see the Windows logo that tells you your operating system is still booting.

This slow and confusing preboot period occurs when the system’s BIOS (basic input/output system) performs a POST (power on self test) and can last for 10 seconds or more, dramatically increasing overall start times. On our tests over the past couple of years, notebook start times took an average of 55 to 66 seconds, across all the major Windows and Mac systems we tested.

Even so called “instant-on” operating systems like DeviceVM’s Splashtop and Google’s upcoming Chrome OS cannot begin loading until the BIOS has completed its POST.

“In the ’90s, people were complaining that BIOSes took a minute [to POST]. So there was a big push from Microsoft and the BIOS makers to start getting down to 10 or 15 seconds,” said Brian Richardson, senior technical marketing engineer at American Megatrends, a leading BIOS vendor. “Now people are used to turning on the TiVo that instantly has that program from last night, and they want that experience on their computers.”

Fortunately, the push for faster start-ups continues. BIOS manufacturers and notebook vendors are hard at work cutting the POST time down to a second or less